Perception of the national health insurance scheme by employees in Uganda

Abstract

This study sought to assess how socio-economic and demographic factors, knowledge and attitude on health insurance and the National Health Insurance Scheme contribute to the employees‟ perception of the National Health insurance scheme in Uganda. The quantitative cross-section study involved distribution of 83 questionnaires to respondents in Kampala. This study employed the judgement sampling which is a type of purposive sampling technique.Univariate, bivariate, multivariate analysis and cross tabulations were performed on the variables to establish relationships in Stata. The results of the study under bivariate analysis revealed relative significant relationships between the education level (p-value = 0.090), knowledge of health insurance (p-value=0.00), health insurance is important in protecting my family (p-value=0.000), knowledge of NHIS (p-value=0.034), affordability of NHIS (p-value=0.092) and worthiness of the NHIS benefits (0.010). In the multivariate analysis, knowledge of health insurance (OR=9.02) and worthiness of the NHIS benefits (OR=6.25) were the greatest predictors of the employees‟ perception on whether the government is doing the right thing by introducing the NHIS. In this study, it was found that majority of the respondents representing the general population were knowledgeable about health insurance, however, they were not as knowledgeable about the proposed National Health Insurance Scheme. There is need by both the government and necessary authorities for example the MOH and Insurance Regulatory Authority to create more awareness of the NHIS to the public through advertisements, informative campaigns and articles.